Surprise! Didn't see that coming!

I get to sleep in tomorrow.  That's going to be such a wonderful luxury.  I try not to but I often stay up late to write and check up on forums and blogs.  When I stay up late and get up early I get lots and lots done, but it costs me a lot.  Today I felt normal most of the day but these last few hours I'm not just exhausted but feeling sore again.  I should know better than to overdo.  Bad Kami, bad, no more getting up early for you for a whole weekend.

Um, what's my motivation for not doing this again?

We had a great INK meeting tonight in which I learned about the flaws in my stories.  Tomorrow I'll fix those flaws as best I can and send them out immediately to the markets I have in mind.  There's one in particular that I was sure I wouldn't have time or energy to finish before the submission deadline and so I relaxed and just let the words flow and didn't write to fit the guidelines per se.  What came out is mysterious in that I'm not sure why or how it works.  Which brings me to one of the ideas I had at the meeting.  I realized why I don't write outlines.  My mental outlines are restrictive enough that I chafe even under those, and when I break away from that predicted path I have these aha moments that I could never plan for, never predict, never craft.  Well, never's a strong word.  But I figure that if they surprise me when they turn up they'll surprise the reader.  If I can plot it out in advance (unless I get into really Byzantine multilayered structure and deliberate twists like some mystery writers do) just about anyone will be able to see it coming.  If it catches me off guard and steals my next heartbeat, I figure I'm onto something good.

I can't of course make a statement like this is my best story ever because only my readers can decide that.  INK liked it, both the stories I had in for critique, actually, so so far so good.  We'll see how this and the other story do when I send them off into the big world to seek their fortunes, and my heart goes with them.